National Invitation Tournament

National Invitation Tournament
provided tremendous media exposure for the team and players. The National Invitation Tournament, commonly abbreviated as NIT, is actually a men's college basketball tournament, being operated by the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

The association has a rule of playing two tournaments at every season. The first tournament is played in the month of November and it is known as the Dick's Sporting Goods NIT Season Tip-Off, due to its sponsorship, which was founded in the year of 1985. The second one is a post-season tournament, being played in the month of March and April.

It is an understood fact that the final rounds of both of the tournaments are played at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The post-season event, which is also called as the MasterCard NIT due to sponsorship factor, was originated in the year of 1938.

In both common and official usage, "NIT" or "National Invitation Tournament" always has a reference to the post-season tournament unless otherwise qualified.

The history of both of the pre- and post-season tournaments tells us that they were always operated by an autonomous authority with the name of Metropolitan Intercollegiate Basketball Association (MIBA), right till the year of 2005.

It was a time, when the tournaments were purchased by the NCAA. The post-season tournament pre-dates the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship tournament by one year.

Originated by the Metropolitan Basketball Writers Association in 1938, responsibility for administering the NIT was transferred two years later to local colleges, which was firstly known as the Metropolitan Intercollegiate Basketball Committee.

Later in the year of 1948 changed to the Metropolitan Intercollegiate Basketball Association (MIBA).

It has been always comprised of the representatives from the five New York City schools: Fordham University, Manhattan College, New York University, St. John's University and Wagner College. Only NYU does is not fall into the category of a Division I school till the present moment.

In actual way, it was a tradition to invite all of the men's teams, which had qualified for the tournament to the New York City and all of the sports were carried out at the Madison Square Garden. Now it is not necessary for the earlier rounds to be played at there, and campus sites are also in use.

The men's tournament was comprised of 6 teams at the time of origination, but later expanded to 8 teams in the year of 1941which has reached up to the level of 40 teams till 2006. Later the tournament reverted to 32 teams for 2007.

By looking at the history of the tournament, in the earlier years of inception, the NIT often drew the nation's best collegiate basketball teams for several reasons.

First, there was limited national media coverage of college basketball; therefore playing in "The Big Apple"